Book Review: The Whispering Skull by Jonathan Stroud

Title: The Whispering Skull (Lockwood & Co. #2)
Author: Jonathan Stroud
Genre: YA/Urban fantasy/Supernatural
Date Read: 28/8/14 – 30/8/14
Rating: ★★★★★

Review:

Last fortnight, I posted my review of The Screaming Staircase, the first book in the Lockwood & Co. series. I gave it four stars, and I expected this one to be at much the same level; to my surprise, this one was even better!

After what should have been a routine mission in a haunted cemetery goes wrong, Lockwood and Co. are trying to track down a very powerful and very dangerous psychic magic mirror which is connected to one of the most terrifying ghosts any of them have encountered. George is especially affected, but Lockwood and Lucy don’t really notice his new obsession with the magical mirror, as he’s always getting obsessed about something. Meanwhile, the skull that spoke to Lucy at the end of the previous book has finally started talking again. It seems to want to help them, but only to a point. And to make matters worse, not only is solving this case a race against time to protect the world from the mirror’s power, it’s also a matter of pride, as Lockwood has turned it into a contest between them and rival agents, Quill Kipps and his group.

In this book, Stroud expands on the alternate version of the UK that he established in The Screaming Staircase. We learn about relic-men, who scour graveyards and other possible Source locations for psychic items to sell to collectors on the black market. One of these, Flo, is a friend(sort of) of Lockwood’s, and helps him out from time to time, including on this case. I loved Flo’s unapologetic abrasive attitude, and that she was willing to be paid in liquorice. We also get to see inside the Fittes Agency and meet Penelope Fittes, granddaughter of the great Marissa Fittes, who founded the agency and wrote many of the books all agents rely on, whether they work for Fittes or not. It seems Penelope is involved with some suspect figures, but the exact nature of that we have yet to learn. While Lockwood remains almost frustratingly mysterious, we do get to learn more about both Lucy and George.

The action is fast-paced and, given the nature and target audience of the book, just the right amount of scary. I sadly didn’t have the same opportunity to stay up all night reading as I had with the first book, but I did find myself itching to go back whenever I had to put it down (like, you know, at work and stuff) because no matter where I left it, there was always something exciting going on. I read the Kindle version, which came out at the end of August. The print version only came out on September 16, so I know I’m going to be sitting about for a while with this problem: